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Monday, March 23, 2015

Brad Plumer, Senior Editor writes, "Emmy Noether
was one of the most brilliant and important mathematicians of the 20th
century. She altered the course of modern physics. Einstein called her a
genius. Yet today, almost nobody knows who she is."

Painting of Emmy Noether by Jennifer Mondfrans from her series, "At Least I Have You, To Remember Me" (Maia Weinstock/Flickr)

In 1915, Noether uncovered one of science's most extraordinary ideas, proving
that every symmetry found in nature has a corresponding law of
conservation. So, for example, the fact that physical laws work the same
today as they did yesterday turns out to be related to the notion that
energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Noether's theorem is a deep insight that underpins much of modern-day physics and things like the search for the Higgs boson.Even so, as one of the very few female mathematicians working
in Germany in her day, Noether faced rampant sexism. As a young woman,
she wasn't allowed to formally attend university. Even after proving
herself a first-rate mathematician, male faculties were reluctant to
hire her. If that wasn't enough, in 1933, the Nazis ousted her for being
Jewish. Even today, she remains all-too obscure.That should change. So it’s welcome news that Google is honoring Noether today with a Google Doodle on her 133rd birthday. To celebrate, here's an introduction to the life and work of a woman Albert Einstein once called "the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced."
Noether was brilliant — yet universities wouldn't hire her

Amalie Emmy Noether was born in 1882 in Erlangen, Germany, to a family of mathematicians. Her father, Max Noether, was a professor at the University of Erlangen. Her brother Fritz later proved worthy in the field of applied math.Despite this fertile background, it wasn't obvious that Emmy could
become a mathematician too. German universities rarely accepted female
students at the time. She had to beg the faculty at Erlangen to let her
audit math courses. It was only after she dominated her exams that the
school relented, giving her a degree and letting her pursue graduate
studies.Her early work focused on invariants in algebra, looking
at which aspects of mathematical functions stay unchanged if you apply
certain transformations to them. (To give a verybasic example of an invariant, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is always the same —it's always π — no matter how big or small you make the circle.) Noether studied invariants for polynomial functions and made some impressive advances.**

Her work got noticed, and, in 1915, the renowned mathematician David Hilbert lobbied for the University of Göttingen to hire her. But other male faculty members blocked the move, with one arguing: "What
will our soldiers think when they return to the university and find
that they are required to learn at the feet of a woman?" So Hilbert had to take Noether on as a guest lecturer for four years. She wasn't paid, and her lectures were often billed under Hilbert's name. She didn't get a full-time position until 1919.That didn't stop Noether from doing trail-blazing work in a number of areas, especially abstract algebra.
Rather than focusing on real numbers and polynomials — the algebraic
equations we learn in high school — Noether was interested in abstract
structures, likerings or groups,
that obey certain rules. Abstract algebra was one of the big
mathematical innovations of the 20th century, and Noether was hugely
influential in shaping it.But perhaps Noether’s most consequential work came in another field: physics. In 1915, Einstein published hisgeneral theory of relativity,
showing that gravity was a property of space and time, and the
University of Göttingen was all abuzz with the the discovery. Hilbert
asked Noether to apply her work on algebraic invariants to the equations
in Einstein's theory.In the process, Noether made a startling discovery of her own.Read more...

Related link Emmy Noether(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)Footnote** In her 1907 dissertation, for instance, Noether studied degree-four polynomials with three variables. She found that these polynomials had331 independent invariants, and all other invariants depended on these. This was a mind-numbing feat of calculation — she later described it as "a jungle of formulas." She soon moved on to bigger, conceptual insights.

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Hello, my name is Helge Scherlund and I am the Education Editor and Online Educator of this personal weblog and the founder of eLearning • Computer-Mediated Communication Center.
I have an education in the teaching adults and adult learning from Roskilde University, with Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Human Resource Development (HRD) as specially studied subjects. I am the author of several articles and publications about the use of decision support tools, e-learning and computer-mediated communication. I am a member of The Danish Mathematical Society (DMF), The Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics (DSTS) and an individual member of the European Mathematical Society (EMS). Note: Comments published here are purely my own and do not reflect those of my current or future employers or other organizations.